Prairie Widow

Jennifer Vandermeer hated Kansas. With all her heart, she wished that she’d never left the dull security of Ohio, had never let her husband, Walter, take her from the order and civilization of the East.

There was no preacher in Four Corners, Kansas, so Seth Baker, at the behest of his wife, improvised the words. Jennifer, her two young children, and a small group of strangers, listened as they clustered in a spot freshly scythed around the rectangular pit.

Walter had not been long among us b...